investigates people who are "too" adamant about the Constitution. If one loves his country or is inspired by the principles upon which it was founded, one is considered whatever the category is lower than a "person of interest".

The problem is that the founders were revolutionaries. They succeeded in a rebellion against the most civilized nation on earth. They were inspired by certain principles more than material gain, (always suspect.) This is not to say that they were not property rights advocates only that it held a lower priority than it does today.

They must have been naive' because they thought that an imperial executive was an abomination. They were probably sinners, because they believed in the separation of church and state, and would have frowned on any transfer of taxpayer dollars to selected religions. I wonder how Wicca, or Scientology will do for government transfers of taxpayer dollars out of the chief executives' discretionary funds.

It wasn't until I observed the current administration in action that I realized the Constitution was designed as a blueprint for wrong doing without consequence for government officials. I foolishly believed that I would not witness such brazen CYA as I saw in the passing of the FISA capitulation, nor the blatant disrespect for the American people proved by their contempt for the Bill of Rights.

Imagine, in the past I actually believed that legislators read legislation before voting on it. Incredibly, I thought that the representatives and their staffs wrote legislation rather than accepting contributions that make it easier to accept legislation written by interested parties.

Worse I thought that the law applied equally to all people no matter how delusional their sense of self-importance. Do presidents' not have to conform to the law, because they are above or below ordinary human nature? As far as importance goes, who is more important, the guy behind a desk in Washington or the guy who has hands around the throat of Osama bin Laden or perferably one of his strategists on the day before he was to give the order for an attack on the U.S.?

Does this mean when the guy returns to the U.S. and kills his cheating wife that he should have his sentence commuted, because he was so damn important prior to his return to the U.S.?

Some of his comrades said that he was of good character. Why should he care? He is important to the right people and that is all the law is. We need to accept illegal, corrupt, or unethical behavior, because somebody escaped prosecution for them at some time in history. Yes it is a child's excuse for wrong doing, but adults get away with the immature excuse fairly easily under the current establishment paradigm.

Then the system is empirically broken. If democratic elections are fundamentally incapable of regularly producing benevolent dutiful representation and leadership, then it's time to try something else.
— naschbac

The system has always been broken WRT presidential elections. Moreover, it's a feature, not a bug, meaning it was designed to work that way. You speak of democratic elections as if that is the way the president is chosen. This is not the case. The president is not elected by the people — the president is elected by the electoral college, the members of which are chosen by the people. If there were democratic elections there would be "one person, one vote" and the candidate who gets the most votes wins. It is not the president that is democratically elected, it is the legislatures. Here each person's vote counts and it is possible to elect third-party candidates or independents. But so long as there is a winner-take-all electoral college, there is only a possibility for two major parties because the correct strategy is to make your party as large as possible. Splinter groups simply have no chance.

So it is not a matter of democratic elections for president having failed as it is that they have never been tried in this country.

You need to keep posting. I love the mom and dad "told me" ..... memories.

Mom said: `people wake up itching for a fight. They steal 'Fruit Nut Cakes'.

Daddy would solve that problem? Drench them fruitcakes in calamine lotion.

I'm happy pieceofcake did not visit UT boasting his mom and dad is the Worst!

pieceofcake can wear a coon skin cap at the breakfast table and say the Grace.

(P.S. Beck, the guy who had is right foot cut off yesterday? Is hanging in there.)

Thanks.

All groups have crazies, hot heads, infiltrators, ignorant rabble, self-serving bastards, and so forth. Most political discussions I have heard or read normally revolve around what the person perceives as best for themselves rather than what is morally right.

I'll never forget (until dementia sets in) the words of a reporter who wrote about what a Salvadoran friend of his said during their guerrilla war. "We can't afford to kill the guerrillas," he said. "There are only 7,000 of them, and your government is paying my government a million dollars a day to fight them." And yet crazies in all parties (and other groups) have hollered for decades that "we" need to support this side or that side in various disputes around the globe.

The first job of those humans among us (not everyone obtains that status) is to fight the USA military and foreign policy. The civil rights concerns that Glenn G. and others here express almost daily are directly connected to the growing militarism and continual warfare.

The problem is multifold, but one of the top problems is that we dream of our government as it exists today becoming "great again as it was in the golden past" if only we elect the correct people. What if it is the nature of the government itself that is our problem? What if there never was a "golden era" when the American government was not as war-mongering as it is today.

Would the native Americans agree that the USA government used to be peaceful? The fellows in the Caribbean? South America? Did you know we invaded Canada twice? And they won both times! A Canadian friend loves to tell the story to all that will sit still and listen to it again.

What to do? Whom to trust? Who is running that promises an era of peace? Who is running that will not bomb a country that has not used force on us first?

Certainly Obama, McCrazier, and Barr all fail the test.